Those Who Remained, Those Who Returned
by Thousandsmiles
Summary: Excerpts of thoughts of the normal people pre and post Hulk's snap in Endgame.


_**I do hope you all enjoy. I tried to write some of the thoughts of normal people through the five years and after Hulk's snap.**_

_**Disclaimer: I do not own The Avengers.**_

* * *

What do you do when the world ends but it doesn't stop?

So many missing.

So many gone

So many.

And yet, we remain.

Who are we that we live?

That we are burdened with living?

That we are burdened with carving a way past the end of the earth into the edge of insanity, clinging to sane thoughts for the sake of children?

Who are we?

* * *

They say they saved the world.

But they only saved the people.

The world is a mess.

How do you come home to a home that no longer exists?

How do you hug a child that's taller that you now?

How do you kiss a spouse that wears a new ring?

How do walk to home that the living abandoned while you were in the realm of the dead?

They saved the people. But we had already lost the world.

* * *

Moving on is…walking past the same roads and telling yourself not to feel.

Moving on is breathing without living.

Moving on is desperation, clinging to the last person you have left.

Moving on is doing your job while the world crumbles around you.

Moving is saving lives while losing your own.

Moving on is this lost thing, you chase after while telling yourself you already have it.

* * *

If I had the capacity to hate I would hate them. Hate the heroes and the villains and the governments and the martyrs and the cowards. I would hate them all. But I'm empty and lost and the only thing that's living left in me is grief, grief, grief. I lost them all. I lost them all and I didn't say goodbye. I didn't say 'I love you' I didn't say I'm sorry, I didn't say I forgive you.

There is only grief.

The world speaks, cries out so many things. But the only thing it really, truly screams is grief.

Pain echoes through each ripple of a wave, the swaying of branches, the creak of settling, empty houses.

We lost.

Oh, so insignificant a way to encompass the depth of it all.

But we lost.

* * *

Five years ago, it would have been a miracle. Now it's a nightmare.

The world shrinks, when you've lost so much.

People are broken. Some are past repairing.

The dead and returned are the same. The ones left behind? Not so much.

Its supposed to be a happy thing.

And it is. It is. It is.

But we are too far gone to handle beautiful things. Too far gone not to ruin every good thing life has thrown at us. We're ruined.

This miracle is melancholy. Because we've loved too hard, grieved too much, over people gone for so long, that we cannot fit our arms around them again. Cannot find a home among those who have not been broken as we are.

And that hurts.

* * *

They brought us back, but to what?

This isn't the home we left. This isn't the people we left behind.

This isn't the world we knew.

This isn't….This isn't anything we know.

Because we know it. We know this place and we don't.

It's déjà vu.

It's like seeing the familiar shadow of your teddy only for it to become the monster under your bed.

This is… this is awful.

There is joy. So much joy.

And so, so much sorrow.

So many graves that weren't there before.

So many broken relationships. So many new ones.

So many new families stitched together out of old parts and no one knowing where to fit the old pieces back.

So many new jobs. So many old jobs no longer existing.

You died a boss and came back to find your newest hire sitting in your chair.

You come back to find that no one had found your newborn in the chaos so all there is left of them is a gravestone, death date guessed at.

You left your newborn and come back to find a healthy brown-eyed boy calling a woman you've never seen in your life, 'mommy.'

You come back to find your kid's married to someone you never knew.

You come back to find your kid graduated without you.

You come back to find that the terminally ill kid you'd left behind didn't make it.

You come back to find your kid made it because the disappeared jumped her that far up the transplant list.

You come back to find that your broken family had repaired itself and you're happy but you don't know what happened, how to fit in this new dynamic.

And each good thing, each wonderous thing is tinged with grief, with pain, with heartache. So intertwined, you can't seem to tell if what happened was good or bad, a miracle or simply another tragedy.

Only time will tell.

Only time can tell.

* * *

And still there are heroes out there flying.

Are they heroes anymore?

Are we all villains?

This good thing, I cannot celebrate.

The bad thing I cannot stop grieving.

The joys I found in the wake of evil still light me up.

Am I a villain?

Was there ever such a thing as heroes?

Is there ever such a thing as winning when you've lost so much, cracked open a hole so large not even returning what was removed can fill it?

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**Review please!**


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